


An Alter(ation)

by holdinglines



Category: Fate/EXTRA, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 22:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdinglines/pseuds/holdinglines
Summary: She didn’t recognize her Servant, but he recognized her.  He knew this scenario, he knew the part they’d play, and he couldn’t wait to watch her die.





	An Alter(ation)

  Something was wrong the moment she stepped into the supply closet.

  Her eyes couldn’t process  _ what _ was happening, exactly, but whatever it was made her want to turn heel and run as fast as she could.  She felt lightheaded, as if she had stood up too fast, and the world briefly turned to static and the ground beneath her tilted to the side.

  She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself.  The world below her continued to rock. Before she knew it, she was sitting on the ground.

  Even when she opened her eyes there was nothing there, just more static that made her eyes burn. 

 She closed them again and forced herself to crawl forward.   _ There had to be something here, the room was so small a second ago it was  _ filled  _ with boxes and cleaning supplies. _

__ But there was nothing.

  Panic started to find its way into her stomach.  Hakuno jolted forward and ran as fast as she could.  If she hit a wall and made a fool of herself, fine, at least she’d know something was  _ there _ .

  Sometimes it felt like the floor was farther away from her feet, but that was stupid of  _  course _ it wouldn’t move from under her and  _ where was that damn wall?! _   She opened and it felt like someone had blown hot dust into them.  She stumbled backwards and felt herself fall.

  No, that was the wrong word.  It was more like her body had gone completely rigid and the world turned beneath her.  She tried to blink away the stars, and felt another jolt of panic.

  Darkness didn’t scare Hakuno – at least she couldn’t ever remember it scaring her– but this was different.  This was nothing. Nothing beneath her, though she was sure her feet were on something; no walls, but when she stretched her hands out, she felt something push back.  When she tried to step back, something pushed against her.

  She could only move forward, so that’s what she did.

  As she walked down the narrow corridor, she reminded herself of what she knew:   _ These are my hands, they’re connected to  _ my  _ arms and those are  _ my _ legs beneath me. _

  Hakuno would’ve continued on in this manner if a terrifying voice that resonated both around her and somehow inside her mind spoke.

  WELCOME, POTENTIAL MASTER.

  It reverberated against the walls, it shook the floor, it was inside her head and she wasn’t even sure it was coming from someone else or if it were just her own thoughts.

  IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR ANSWERS, PLEASE STEP FORWARD.

  Her ears popped.  Where there had been nothing, there were sudden sounds and sights that hadn’t existed before.  It was disorienting, there was no transition between Existing and Not-Existing.

  Light streamed in from stained glass windows, but they were strewn across the place with no rhyme or reason.  Some appeared to be stretched so thinly that only a sliver of colored light crept through. When she walked by one that she’d  _ thought _ was far away, turned out to be a window barely longer than her thumb.  Only a few of them stood vertically. All of them were just slightly  _ off _ : angled wrong, laying on their side, one edge higher than the other or one end pinched too close to another.  It reminded her of a child that had a bunch of identical stickers and had plastered them on a surface completely at random.

  She took a deep breath and rubbed her temples.  She felt a headache at the sudden burst of color all around her.  She looked down at her feet, hoping the ground wouldn’t be as busy, but it still unsettled her in a different way.  She could was standing on something, she knew this, she  _ felt _ this, but it wasn’t on the ground beneath her.  From the way the shadows looked, she seemed to be about three inches off the ground.  She chewed her lip and tried to get off the ledge, as it were.

  Her body lurched and her body felt like it was two no three no one places at once.  She clipped five feet to her left, she was touching the ground exactly where she was, she was still hovering inches from the ground, she was thrown up into the air.

  She tried to keep her arms outstretched for balance, but she quickly clamped them over her mouth to keep herself from vomiting.

  When she was finally on the ground, she curled up into a ball to keep herself from trembling.   _ What is going on _ ?

  There was a sound.

  In front of her were pieces of a porcelain doll.  It had no joints, each part merely floated where it was supposed to be and gave the whole thing a vaguely humanoid shape.  The poor thing appeared to be cracked too, but instead of glue holding the pieces together it emitted a reddish glow. The whole thing shuddered and rushed towards her, half running half falling over itself.

  -- FAREWELL.  I PRAY YOU FIND PEACE IN YOUR ANNIHILATION.

  Everything hurt.  Whatever protection she had had up till now was useless.  The toy stabbed her in the stomach, but it felt like her very core had been hurt.  The toy vanished, the floor vanished, the colors from the windows fell farther and farther away.  At some point she landed atop a mound of bodies, but she couldn’t remember the sensation. Her eyes were on the lights that were getting smaller and smaller.

_ I don’t want to give up _ .

  She tried to move, tried to fight, but her entire body was shot with another wave of pain.

_ I don’t want to die here _ ,  _ I won’t. _

  She clipped through the corpses, and for a moment she thought she’d suffocate under the bodies of other students.  Then they were all gone and an unbearably loud static was heard. Everything hurt, everything was on fire but she gritted her teeth and fought off the tears.

_ I don’t wanna die! _

  “...what a bunch of morons.  Arent’ you sick of living?”

_ No.  Not yet. _

  “...Hmph.”

  Something grabbed her arm and nearly pulled it out of her socket.  She was back. Back in the light. Back in her body. In front of her was a shadow of a man, there was no other way to describe him.

  “Very well.  Unlike you, I’ll answer your call and save you.”


End file.
